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All posts tagged: Tehran

The desert summer is leaving us for another year and the air is beginning to feel cool (ish), the galleries are re-opening and Fat Nancy took a stroll around Al Quoz and found an exhibition that re-ignited an interest in calligraphy in contemporary art – Pouran Jinchi, The Third Line. It brought to mind other artists working in a very similar way and left an itching to get back to old notes and dig out some favourites – in particular fellow Iranians, Azra Aghighi Bakhshayeshi, Golnaz Fathi and Mohamed Bozorgi (ref. images at the end of article). You may not read or understand Arabic, but there is a musicality to the pieces and something meditative about the repetitious nature of their making that draws the viewer in. It’s understood that even a native speaker would struggle to define any actual letters in most of the works – someone once described the effect as a kind of whispering, the paintings murmuring to the viewer. The message is almost inaudible and they hint towards meaning rather than explicitly …

A Miracle for the Whole World is Mehdi Farhadian’s first solo exhibition in Dubai. In this new series of works Farhadian departs from his usual references to history and architecture and instead explores nature and man’s relationship to the natural forces that surround, using magical imagery to evoke a nostalgic longing for the past whilst hinting at a futuristic utopia. Large-scale mountain ranges, wide skies and forest scenes reference the artist’s childhood memories of Northern Iran, with the ever present protagonists appearing small and insignificant against these vast landscapes. Farhadian invites the viewer to contemplate a time bygone and to consider the universal and ever-present power of nature. Rocks and clouds, streams and woods, women and men, birds and beasts immerse themselves in Mother Nature appearing to enjoy the sensuality of the long grass, the deep forests and soothing waters; captivated by the majestic beauty of their surroundings. And yet, looking at the works deep feelings of longing and sense of unease and ambiguity are ever-present. Is this a message of hope towards utopia or one of the …

Iranian artist Laleh Khorramian, represented by Dubai’s The Third Line, will join the Statements sector of the fair. [Every year, Art Basel’s Statements presents new solo projects by young and emerging artists and at the end of the four-day fair, two are awarded the Bâloise Art Prize.] Khorramian’s project features mixed-media paintings and a video installation of fragments of a science fiction film titled M-GOLIS and set in 2202. In the film, the artist has created a chemically polluted planet of the same name that is populated only by prisoners whose sentence is to reside there and reverse the pollution. Viewers are invited to follow the journey of the inmate Lieutenant Aurelio Swimm, whose consciousness has been altered by extreme isolation and exposure to a toxic and increasingly hallucinogenic environment. The artist is not into the apocalyptic story but more into what happens after life begins again or is changed. She’d like to imagine a scenario where she is hovering over the recent past, witnessing transition and regrowth. A refreshing change to see some art from …